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THEATER GUIDE

A selective listing by critics of The Times of new or noteworthy Broadway and Off Broadway shows this weekend. Approximate running times are in parentheses. * denotes a highly recommended show.

+ means discounted tickets were at the Theater Development Fund's TKTS booth for performances last Friday and Saturday nights.

++ means discounted tickets were available at the TKTS booth for last Friday night only.

+++ means discounted tickets were available at the TKTS booth for performances last Saturday night only.

Broadway

+ ''BLAST!'' One ends up feeling bad about criticizing the nice young men and women whose Vegas-friendly enhancements of drum-and-bugle corps routines make up this alleged extravaganza. Mostly in their 20's, they are brass players and percussionists, dancers and jugglers, a glowingly good-looking bunch, and irrepressibly cheery, too. But it is hard to shake the notion that this is a halftime show -- complete with flag-waving, party-colored lighting and broad, bland choreography -- that has wandered onto Broadway by mistake, as if it had gotten lost on the way to the stadium. (1:45). Broadway Theater, 1681 Broadway at 53rd Street, (212) 239-6200. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m.; Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets: $25 to $80 (Bruce Weber).

++ ''FOLLIES.'' The ardently anticipated revival of ''Follies,'' the first Broadway production since the original of 1971, certainly gets you thinking about the souring effects of time and of roads not taken. What is widely remembered as a ravishing musical elegy for an era in American show business has resurfaced as a small, bleak pedestrian tale of two unhappy marriages. The magic was always in Stephen Sondheim's music, which brilliantly reinflected song styles of the past. Matthew Warchus's pale, strangely tentative production shifts the emphasis to James Goldman's brittle book. This is not what is known as playing to one's strengths. The cast memorably includes fabled veterans like Joan Roberts, Donald Saddler and Polly Bergen. But in the four principal roles, Blythe Danner, Gregory Harrison, Judith Ivey and Treat Williams come across as reluctant revelers on a scavenger hunt forced to look for the characters they have been asked to portray (2:45). Belasco, 111 West 44th Street, (212) 239-6200. Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m.; Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m. Tickets: $45 to $90 (Ben Brantley).

* ''THE INVENTION OF LOVE.'' Tom Stoppard's dazzling exercise in metabiography takes us to hell, Oxford and the Edwardian corridors of power to explore the life of A. E. Housman, the poet (''A Shropshire Lad'') and classicist. And while the work is steeped in the Stoppardian principle that cleverness is next to godliness -- and crammed with cultural and historical arcana -- it is entirely possible to revel in this time-traveling fantasia about art, memory and homosexuality without getting every reference. Mr. Stoppard is an outrageous showoff, determined to charm and amuse. And the director, Jack O'Brien, borrows from burlesque and the music hall to bring out the liveliness in the remarkably fine cast, led by Richard Easton and Robert Sean Leonard as the older and younger Housmans. The production finds the ache of wistfulness beneath the intellectual glitter (2:45). Lyceum, 149 West 45th Street, (212) 239-6200. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m.; Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets: $40 to $70 (Brantley).

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* ''THE PRODUCERS.'' How do you single out highlights in a bonfire? Anyone who sees this sublimely ridiculous show is going to be hard pressed to name a favorite moment. (Is it the singing pigeons? Adolf Hitler doing Judy Garland?) Mel Brooks's wildly energetic stage adaptation of his 1968 cult movie is as full of gags, gadgets and gimmicks as a master vaudevillian's trunk. But the production is so much more than the sum of its gorgeously silly parts. It is, to put it simply, the real thing: a big Broadway book musical so ecstatically drunk on its powers to entertain that it leaves you delirious, too. With the inspired assistance of the director and choreographer Susan Stroman and the happiest cast in town, led by Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick in the performances of their careers, Mr. Brooks has put on a show that is a valentine to every show there is, good and bad, about putting on a show (2:45). St. James, 246 West 44th Street, (212) 239-6200. Tuesdays through Fridays at 8 p.m.; Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 2 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets: $30 to $100 (Brantley).

Off Broadway

*+++ ''LACKAWANNA BLUES.'' This childhood reminiscence, written and performed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, is unlike a lot of inaugural literary ventures in that it was composed more out of reflection than angst. There is no soul-searching, no brooding; the playwright isn't even the main character. Instead, the play focuses on the woman who reared him, Rachel Crosby, who owned a rooming house in Lackawanna, N.Y. Through the eyes of 20 or so characters, the author presents Miss Rachel as tough, energetic, principled and saintly. It's an idealized portrayal but performed with marvelous subtlety and rare humility. It is an unashamed work of thanks, admirable and winning because of how un-self-conscious it is (1:15). Public, 425 Lafayette Street, East Village, (212) 239-6200. Tuesdays through Fridays at 8 p.m.; Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 2 p.m. Tickets: $45 (Weber).

+ ''TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.'' A sluggish, unilluminating production, directed by Sir Peter Hall, of perhaps Shakespeare's most linguistically sophisticated play and one of his most bitterly satirical. ''Troilus and Cressida'' is a sort of backstage drama, a tale of the bickering and backbiting that fester behind public presentation. It's a love story set in the seventh year of the Trojan War, but the focus is on folly, not grandeur. It has the potential for wicked hilarity and grandiose disdain for hubris and its potentially tragic consequences, but Sir Peter, who admitted to being focused first and foremost on Shakespeare's language, has presented more of a lesson in diction than anything else (3:30). American Place, 111 West 46th Street, (212) 239-6200. Tuesdays through Fridays at 8 p.m.; Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 2 and 7 p.m. Tickets: $55 (Weber).

Last Chance

''REFERENCES TO SALVADOR DALI MAKE ME HOT.'' José Rivera's characters tend to live in a world where magical and concrete forces coexist, where life's anchoring burdens do battle with uncommonly potent wishes and dreams. In his latest work, Mr. Rivera visits this conflict on a young woman named Gabriela, displaced from the South Bronx to Barstow, Calif., where her husband, a soldier, has been stationed after the Persian Gulf war. And the result is a tense marital drama played amid anthropomorphic fantasies and celestial dreams. The juxtaposition of realism and surrealism is more jarring than it means to be, but the play is a piquing, if tangled, nest of ideas. And with Rosie Perez working out her stage chops as Gabriela, and the volcanic John Ortiz as her husband, the actors' chemistry has its fascinations, too (2:00). Public, 425 Lafayette Street, East Village, (212) 239-6200. Through Sunday. Tonight at 8; tomorrow at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets: $45 (Weber).